


This is Your Brain on Space

by Ninj



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, The chair, spoilers through episode 55
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 21:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12418839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninj/pseuds/Ninj
Summary: Doug Eiffel's brain has been through a lot. Miranda's Price's chair of doom and torture might be the end of it.





	This is Your Brain on Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [technohumanemulatingmachine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/technohumanemulatingmachine/gifts).



According to Price and Carter space will fuck with your mind. Eiffel can’t argue with that, but he also feels like the writers didn’t talk enough about how they would also fuck with your mind. So here he is, and his mind is fucked. 

“Your mind was always fucked,” Dr. Hilbert seems to know what Eiffel is thinking, and that’s disturbing. “Why do you think so many people try to fix it?” 

“Doc, come on,” Eiffel knows he’s dead. Hilbert that is. Eiffel’s understanding of his own life status is fluid. 

“You just had aliens shoving things into your brain and taking things out,” Hilbert reminds him There are specimen jars with brains on the shelves. Too many jars. At least twenty. Some brains look bigger than others. 

Eiffel thinks all the brains are his. His thoughts taken from his head, and placed in jars. Space man. He should not have signed up for this. Are those supposed to be the thoughts the aliens took and put back, or what the machine is doing to him now? Will they ever go back in his head? Are they gone forever? Are those all the Star Wars references he wishes he was making. It’s horrifying to contemplate what sitting back in one chair may have done to his mind. 

“I think I’m out of creative escapes,” Eiffel isn’t sure why he’s talking to a dead man. Why is he constantly narrating his horror show of a life? 

“Of course you are,” Hilbert becomes less solid. More condescending. “Eiffel?” 

“Yeah, yeah, what?” Eiffel tries to sound annoyed, but he thinks all he manages is exhausted and very slurred. He’s not his best self, ok?

“He’s a stubborn one,” someone he’s pretty sure is not Hera comments. Hera doesn’t usually have hands that she lovingly runs over brain stealing chairs. 

Eiffel thinks Not Hera is warped. She invented this machine to steal his thoughts, to change him. Why is she here again? Eiffel doesn’t have time for another thought before he’s seeing ghosts again. Are they ghosts or memories? He’s staring at Specimen 34 waving it’s plant tentacles with night lights behind Dr. Hilbert’s head. Eiffel wouldn’t be surprised if this had actually happened and he forgot. 

“I don’t think my brain can handle this,” Eiffel’s brain has handled a lot. Funny that this is what does it in. 

“So stop fighting,” Hilbert advises. Hilbert who never advocated fighting the science. “Just let them think you’ve stopped fighting.”

“Live to rebel another day?” Eiffel closes his eyes. Not fighting anymore sounds so very tempting. However, giving Cutter the satisfaction is something he would hate to do.

“You might be alive,” Hilbert agrees. “What is life?” 

“Doc, you’re killing me,” Eiffel cannot think about these questions now. Hilbert is really asking too much.

“Not anymore,” Hilbert is holding a vial of decima virus up to the light. He has that disappointed mad scientist look in his eyes. Disappointed he’s not the one who finally broke Eiffel. “I think they’re doing a much better job.” 

“Is that why I’m talking to you?” Eiffel wouldn’t be surprised if he was stuck with Hilbert and all their mistakes in death. “Am I already dead?”

Eiffel is definitely having an out of body experience. Meaning, his consciousness is here with Hilbert still strapped in a chair looking at his brains, and their mistakes, and an oddly animated Specimen 34, but he’s also got the sense of walking and talking. It’s very disorienting. More disorienting than the aliens and that just says a lot. 

“Yes sir,” Eiffel’s voice is chorused with Minkowski and for just a second he see’s a horrified Loveless. Eiffel is screaming in his head. That is not his voice, that is not him. He’s back in the lab. 

“Rest for now Eiffel,” Hilbert advises. “Maybe tomorrow, you live again.”

Eiffel is sitting in the chair, and he’s not. He is ready to fight the power, and he’s escorting Loveless to a cell. He’s talking with a dead man, and saying nothing at all. Space, he thinks somewhat hysterically as slumps into the chair, it will fuck with your mind.


End file.
